


And For A Time

by arewe_weare



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Help, Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, Other, Piper is nice, Post-Tartarus (Percy Jackson), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, Trauma, it's all they have, no monies for demigod sanity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25568389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arewe_weare/pseuds/arewe_weare
Summary: She didn’t think there was any demigod as powerful as Percy-not even Jason. And she knew Athena chose Annabeth out of all her children for a reason. She knew she was hero worshipping, but then she'd gotten closer to them, and she could see the cracks now.Growing, and creeping, in their eyes, and their hands, and their backs. Piper helps her friends.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Piper McLean, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & Piper McLean
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	1. Breakfast Of Champions

Nico was the only one other than Percy and Annabeth who’d been in the pit. He talked to Hazel about it, his hands still, and his face carefully blank. Then he’d walk into the shadow of something and come back hours later, tired, and monster dust staining his clothes. Hazel said he was getting better, that he was slowly coming back sooner and sooner, and once he’d talked about it twice in two weeks. It was slow.

She walked over to the hearth, and offered all her coke to mother dear as penance for the upcoming perceived betrayal. She placed the glass on a nearby table and then gave the best parts of her omelette and chicken to Athena, and half her yogurt and pancakes to Poseiden. 

She turned around to the table where the other members of “the seven” were sitting. Which was weird. Being the seven.

Percy and Annabbeth catch her eyes first as always nowadays. Breakfast has become more about the initial second of wanting to cry on seeing their faces amongst the other campers’ in the mess than about food. As she walked towards them, she suddenly felt an urge to hurl the plate full of food into the fire, grab everything around her, and start hurling it at the fire as well.

Percy took a bite of his blue pancakes, and Annabeth turned the page on her book. She was sitting with her back to the table, while Percy sat the opposite, more usual way. On good days, she’d sit a straddle on the bench, book propped on Percy’s side. Grover would sit on her other side everyday, but she got the feeling she wouldn’t sit like she did on a good day if Grover wasn’t at her back.

She wondered if Annabeth would even come to breakfast if Percy wouldn’t wait in front of Athena cabin for her, or if Percy would even try to eat as much as he did, if Annabeth didn’t keep nudging him every few pages. It was good she read as fast as she did.

She bounced into her seat in front of them, and started her routine.

"Hey, Annabeth!"

Annabeth replied without leaving her book, “Hey, Pipes.”

“What-cha reading, hmmmm?”, Piper said, crooning her voice so it was nasally and sweet. It was weird, and Annabeth had stared at her with something resembling concern when she first used it. But it was fine with Piper, because she’d stopped staring at the same words on the same page she had been at for the past few minutes, and had gone back to reading properly, and nudging Percy so he could finally eat. 

Annabeth figured it out by the second time Piper did it; which was because Annabeth kept glancing at Percy from her book, her jaw clenched, her mouth thin, her breath wavering too much here and there. Percy would have caught it before, but he was too tired nowadays, and Annabeth never seemed to resent him for it. It was probably good Percy didn’t catch it.

So Annabeth could keep fighting for breath amongst her friends, and not feel humiliated when someone noticed and tried to take her someplace quiet and alone so she could cry it out, like a normal fucking person.

Piper blinked her eyes, and felt guilt chill and sting at the rage and twisted anger bursting in her again, wanting to snap her hands into movement, whip Annabeth’s books from her hands, and scream at her. She shook her head, and moved her focus back to her daily routine.

Annabeth hmmed, and said, “The Second Sex. Simone Beauvoire.”

Regardless, she let Piper do it, and that made Piper breathe easier.

Piper hmmmed back, “Is it good? I think I read it before, but I can't remember.”

Annabeth’s eyes changed for an instant, and something like a smile flashes across her face, and it doesn’t quite go away completely.

She shifted closer in her seat, and said, “You might have, it’s pretty exciting. It’s about this guy, Jamie, and there aren't any girls alive, and, this guy, he finds the first one in like centuries.”

Piper hmmed, “Doesn’t sound bad, can I see it when you’re done? Ooh, is the guy hot?

“Jamie?”

“Yeah, him”

“Eh, he’s alright, the girl, Anna, she’s hot. “

Piper hmmmmms agreeably and Annabeth finally looks away to Percy, and nudges him. Percy picks up some pancakes with his fork, and eats.

Piper looks down quickly at her own food and starts eating.

“What’s up Percy.”, she says, pushing the words past pancakes and sour-sweet yogurt. She likes yogurt a lot sometimes.

“Not much, Pipes.”

“You down for a spar today?”

“Hmmmmm…..”

“No, trust me, I’ll make it worth your while”

Percy smiled, and he looked so tired Piper wanted to look away from her friend’s face.

“Yeah, I mean, I got this idea…”

A glint sparked his eye, and he looked cocky.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you know how I fight with my right hand every time? Like I always come at you with my right hand“, she said, gesticulating a firm first clutching a fork spearing a bite of pancakes at Percy, who eyes it curiously. 

“Well, I've been figuring some stuff out about my anatomy, and I’m pretty sure I got something big.”

She shovels the fork into her mouth obnoxiously, her eyebrows raised smugly and her eyes bored.

Percy stared at her for a moment, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see Annabeth fighting a smile valiantly, biting her lip as she did it. The yogurt turns a lemony soury yellow in her mouth, and it punches her taste buds into submission for creamy sweet pancakes to lovingly cure. Huh. Well then.

“Piper... are you gonna come at me by switching your hand midspar?”, Percy said. Piper dropped her face into an outrageous blank even Percy would see through in his sleep deprived haze.

“Mmmmmnnno?”

A smile came to his face easy as anything, and he shoveled another bite, and took it down. Then Percy breathed in for a second, like he had to force himself to be okay for a second before he could say it, “I mean, I’m tired out honestly...”

Piper pouted as he went on, and he snorted into the next words, and they came out stronger.

“But I got some time to waste if you wanna get tossed into the dirt.”

She slowly narrowed her eyes till they were rough, squinty lines, holding Percy’s grinning attention, and nodded a short, hard yes.Then she hmmphed. Percy chuckled, his eyes bright, and scooped another bite into his mouth. Annabeth’s lips curved upwards.

Piper felt something glide inside of her. A wave of something. Maybe that was the yogurt.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder what Simone de Beauvoir would say about how I hijacked her work...
> 
> Apologies for any punctuation errors in the dialogue. It's been many years since my days of daydreaming in English Grammar, and osmosis was not in my favor.
> 
> Also, apologies for any formatting issues. This is the first fic I've ever written, and Google Docs displays it differently than AO3. Hopefully I'll correct it, but we'll see if I'm up to the task.
> 
> Chapter two will be out soon. Percy and Piper hit each other in the arena in that one.
> 
> Have a nice day :)


	2. En garde!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Percy and Piper have at it, and it goes kinda wrong, and then it's a bit better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said the second chapter would be out soon. Well then.

The arena is never really empty, there are always demigods unleashing something filling it up. Today, a handful of teenagers sprinkle across the sand in pairs of two. The arena looks larger and warped for it. She walks over to where Percy has been waiting for her. He’s alone, and his sword is out. There’s sweat beading down his skin, and his shirt is damp.

“Where’s Annabeth?”

“Her and Grover are working out some of the like, forest-y parts of Olympus…”

Piper nodded, and pulled out Katoptris. Percy grins.

“Twenty minutes of warm up, then we spar?”

He nods, and they get to it.

The minutes go by quick, and before she knows it, they’re walking along to another spot. They’ve kicked too much sand about, and it’s too uneven. That’s normally better but today’s an ideal, never-in-the-real-world-ever conditions kinda day. In her head, she wonders if she could get a cut on Percy if she actually does switch hands. She decides to use it if he starts getting too tense and sharp with his sword. It’ll calm him down.

Percy turns around and gives her a second to drop into a defensive position. He moves at her, and he’s suddenly bringing his sword down on her. She whips in the opposite direction and lashes out at his side, but he’s already moving away, just out of reach. Out of the corner of her eye, Riptide is already cutting a sweep through the air, aimed at her thigh.

She brings Kapotris down, and manages a fast, if not clumsy parry. It goes on like that, Percy testing and pushing her, and her trying to find stable ground to push back from. He won’t give it to her, so she decides to take a hit, and force herself into his space. 

She moves closer, at an angle to a swipe going away from his chest. It gets her, but she’s already past it. Her dagger is made for stabbing, and she’s too close for him to do much with Riptide. She ducks under another insanely fast sweep aimed down so she gets halved by it, pushes at the flat of Riptide with her arm so it misses her on its way down, and moves in with Kapotris, knowing he won’t risk getting stabbed on slashing her arm off.

Giving her the chance to push Kapotris at his side, sharp and clear. He grabs at her wrist quick and harsh, and pushes her dagger to the side with his other hand. It catches on his shirt, and rips through it with a jerk. He pushes her away with the hold he has on her dagger arm, and bounces back to get some space to swing Riptide freely.

A growl rises in Piper’s stomach, and forces its way up. She jumps at him, and Percy grins back, sharp and feral. She slashes first, and it goes on.

The sun beats down on her, and the sand turns hot, stinging her eyes. She slips on it here and there, and tries to ignore Percy’s smirks as his feet fly and leap across the grains. Sweat beads up, and she starts hitting harder. Percy blocks every one of them, but she can see cuts she could slash, and how flicking her dagger a certain way could surprise him. Her head is heating up, but the back of her neck is slightly chilly for some reason.

She just needs to hit harder, and so she does. 

She slams Riptide to the side, the sound ringing in her ears, dull and echoing. Her hand whirls out and she gets a tear on his side. Not just the shirt. She knows she has. She can see every thread tatter, every grain of sand fly. Something lightens in her head, and she realises it’s a red pressure that’s been building throughout the spar. She hadn’t even noticed it until she finally got a cut on Percy. 

She barks a laugh, her mind swirling, and her breath tight, like someone was standing on her. Percy’s hand swerves up, and smashes into her chest. She slams to the ground, dizzy and breathless, as he backs up. 

She can’t see very well through the sand rising up, but Percy stumbles back a step, his feet tripping and throwing sand. Her blood runs cold. The hot fire rising up her spine dims, and the pressure becomes heavy again.

Piper’s eyes sharpen, and she catches a hollow emptiness and a fear flicker in his gaze. She tries to get up quick, but stumbles a bit. She doesn’t know what’s happening, and doubt flickers alive in her gut. Maybe it wasn’t a good day. She shouldn't have made him spar her. 

Piper watches as he probes the red bleeding into his shirt. It’s too quick. Too much. The world seems to stop, and she can’t seem to think anything. His fingers pull up the orange camp shirt, and there’s a slit on his side. It’s not too deep, and ambrosia and nectar should heal it in minutes. It happens. Better to get stabbed in the arena by a friend than get impaled in the real world by a monster.

But there’s something wrong. Something creeping up her chest, pulling at her breath. And Percy knows it too.

She’s so angry. She’s so angry. She wants to grab something and start hitting Percy with it. Wants to start tearing at his shirt and jump on him, and push his face into the sand, see how he likes it. 

She’s still half crouched on the ground. She tries to think only about getting up slowly, her legs uncurling and trying not to shake. Piper tries to take a deep breath as she gets up, but her eyes haven’t left Percy at all. He’s still moving the wound around, looking at it closely. He looks up at her, and snorts, his eyes calm. 

“Break for a couple, yeah? Come help me get some nectar on this.”

Something had just snapped, and she doesn’t know what it was. She can’t seem to think anything. She just watches him turn and start walking to the side. Piper follows him, monotone and steady. Her fingers are twitching, and her breath just won’t calm down.

The sides of the arena are stocked with nectar and ambrosia, and tables and benches. Boxes clutter and spread across the tables, full of things to knit and hold, or tear and cut. There are surgical kits, and enough lengths of threads and bandages to circle New York. Percy sits down on a bench. He turns to reach for a glass bottle of nectar, but Piper’s already handing it to him. He smoothly takes the shaking bottle from her hands, and uncaps the glass cap.

Nectar is more opaque than honey, and rolls and flows a bit faster. She moves, and grabs a metal syringe from a metal box full of them. There’s a bowl of clear liquid on every table. She plunges the syringe into it, and draws it full. Then she pushes down on the liquid, and watches it flow back into the bowl.

Percy’s waiting for her with a band aid he’s grabbed, and he’s kept the open nectar bottle between them. She sits slowly, and draws the nectar into the syringe. It fills slowly, and looks delicious. It’ll taste of black bean soup. But Piper just ate food, and she decides chugging the damn thing in front of Percy would be inappropriate after she just stabbed him.

Piper ignores the thought and instead hands Percy the syringe. She places the cap on the bottle, and twists it until she hears the click and feels the lock slide into place. Then she moves closer to Percy, and takes the syringe back into her hand, carefully depressing the plunger so a drop of nectar leaks out.

“You know, we don’t really need to sterilize it”, Percy says, “Nectar would heal infections and stuff before they get too big anyways.”

“I guess, but Will starts bitching about medical procedures and shit.”

“He does love his medical procedures”, Percy says.

“At least he doesn’t talk at me about Nico then," thank god.”

A huff bursts from his chest, and she watches from below her lashes, as it builds into a laugh. He shakes his head, and starts laughing even harder. It isn’t a yell-ey type of laugh, it’s quiet and more about how he laughs with his body. She likes those best anyway. You’re so busy laughing you can’t even get loud about it.

She snorts, and tries to hold back the laugh bubbling through, but it escapes as a grin.

“Hold still, jesus.” He looks at her and grins, and a chuckle comes from her end. She looks down, and starts laughing as well.

It’s a moment of worshipping and enjoying the image of Will insistently spreading knowledge of Nico’s grace and intelligence and cheekbones and ass, holding seminars and workshops on his dark, deep eyes before they’re done and calm. 

“Fuck, I feel bad but he deserves it dude”

“Oh, fuck him so much, fucking workshops”

“I swear, I would have just chosen to bleed out than sign up for that shit”

“Too bad Chiron knew that huh. Had to go and make it mandatory”

“Hmmmmm”

She maneuvers the syringe into the wound as Percy holds it open, and presses down on the plunger. Nectar fills the wound. She pulls the syringe out, and throws it into a steel bin nearby. It hits the other used syringes with a loud clang. As he presses the band-aid over the wound, she grabs a sealed bag of ambrosia and breaks off a piece small enough they won’t have to worry about meeting his limit if he needs more later. It’s not that big a wound. It should heal quickly.

He moves to take it, and she shakes her head.

“Don’t move, don’t move”, she says.

She motions him to lean back and open his mouth, and she drops it in.

He closes his eyes and starts chewing down on the ambrosia. She knows it’ll taste like blue chocolate cookies. She doesn’t know how the blue matters, but she tasted the yellow in her lemon yogurt today so who really knows.

For a few minutes, they sit there. Then he says, “You didn’t hurt me, Pipes.”

“I know”, Piper says, as ice crawls up her chest, and down her throat.

She thinks if she looks to her left, Percy will be dead, and his blood will be everywhere, pooling on the bench, getting in between her fingers, and sinking like a twisted hourglass into the sand. Everything blurs, her jaws twitch, and she forces the hand he can see to relax. She’s curving the wood slightly with how hard she’s gripping it, and her joints are screaming. The pain joins a hurricane of fear storming inside her head. It fills her mind, and someone comes up from behind, puts her in a choke hold, and shoves cold ice into her side. She bleeds out, gasping for breath as her lungs fight the tightness of the hold, and slowly dies.

“I was just trying to help”, she says, rushing the words out, her voice slightly catching upwards on the last word. Her throat keeps tightening, and she hopes Percy doesn't notice.

“Sometimes I feel like it makes it worse. But I don’t know. It helps, you know. Even when it doesn’t. I guess," he says. "It’s better. It makes it...I don’t know.”

She nods, hurriedly, because the floor is sinking underneath her. Cool sweat rolls down her forearms and back, and she feels so cold. So open and exposed, and so stupid.

Percy stares at her for a second. Things flit across his face, and he looks tired. She doesn’t want him to keep trying anymore. She wishes he could just sleep.

“I mean, it’s just…”, he tries, like his throat is so dry, it comes out in his voice. She can hear it crack and break.

“Don’t, it’s okay, I shouldn’t’ve pushed", Piper says, "I thought it-”

“No, you didn’t”, he snaps, his face twisting sharp. She glances down at the freckles of wet sand at their feet, from sweat dripping down their chins and their hair. She tries to empty her mind and fill it with nothing but the flashes of brown dots against yellow grain, but it doesn’t work. 

Something is howling and screaming inside her head. It won’t go away.

They don’t say anything for a few seconds. Percy huffs, shifts his hand, and tightens his grip on the bench, mirroring her. The wood squeaks and then groans flatulently. It jerks her out of the eye of the storm slowly shrinking in her mind, and she huffs a laugh, breathless and tight. 

“Ugh, dude, gross. Don’t eat so much if you can’t take it”, she says. 

She hopes he doesn’t see how her lungs aren’t pulling their weight, and that it’s concerning that this is the best she can come up with.

He mutters a fuck off under his breath, pushing it through the responding grin on his face. 

Weak. Samesies man, samesies honestly, she thinks. They’re both there, and it’s suddenly not as bad. She doesn’t think it’ll stay that way. He lets her by with the joke though and it’s very big of him, she thinks.

He shakes his head, looks firm, and says, “You didn’t push. It helped. I’m just...scared...Yeah?”

She turns to look at him, and the light hits one side of his face, leaving the other shadowed, like two sides of a mountain range in a sunrise. She nods. “Yeah”, she says.

He glances away for a moment and swallows. Then he turns back, whipping a fierce eye on her. The whiplash and contrast makes her happy. And Percy looks adorable when he’s angry like this.

“I know you’ve been trying to help. Annabeth does too, obviously. But we haven’t been helping you”, Percy says.

“It’s not as bad for me”, she says, shaking her head.

“Who decides that?”, he insists.

“No, I'm not saying...It...You did help. Both of you. I just…”

She tries to say something, but her throat is empty, and her mouth can’t form any words. After a moment, she gives up.

“Fuck, we’re millennials, we’re supposed to be good with this mental health shit“, she sighs.

“Yeah…”, Percy says, as he stands up and stretches. He turns to where the baggy of ambrosia is left, and walks over to it. He pulls out the square, and picks up a knife.

Piper says, “it just helps me so much, I think. When you two…”

He carefully places the square on a square steel tray, one of many things sprinkled along the benches.

“You know, I wasn’t even that impressed when I first saw you. Like I was when I saw annabeth. And I-”, she says, pausing to see him smirking.

“Shut up, you were so fucking short, you looked like the surfer boy from a fucking 90’s boy band”

He laughs loud this time, and he arches back, and his hair flies and jumps. She likes this laugh as well, and joins him, contributing snickering from her end. “But it changed you know, like. I was impressed, Percy.” She turns to look at him, and catches his eye.

“I really was. And it was great. But you don’t...now..you just...you don’t eat Percy. And Annabeth does, but then she doesn’t sleep enough. And neither do you. And then you come with me to fight in the fucking arena. Like it’s fucking good for you or-...You don’t even-”

She bites back the last part, because she thinks Percy sees himself failing Annabeth in the pit down in his dreams enough anyway. He doesn’t need to know about Annabeth having panic attacks inches away from him. It’s not his fault. He’s probably walking through that place every second he’s not present enough to eat as well. 

It’s interesting. She thinks Percy falls into the pit more, but Annabeth probably sees the pit coming into the world above. The monsters lurking just outside the corner of her eye, the toxic air in Percy’s cabin as she goes to sleep, and he dies gasping, and a drumming heart beat in every blunt impact.

He looks solemn now. He blinks, and he smiles sadly. 

“I know”, he says.

He looks down on the golden honey square, and carefully pushes the knife into it, separating a thin strip, leaving the perfect cube slightly rectangular. He nods thoughtfully.

She always liked the different types of chocolate bar shaped ambrosia more. But this is more consistent, easily measured, Will insisted. Bitched more like. He packages the square carefully, not bothering to seal it like they were “educated”. Piper grins weakly as he rolls up the packaging, and winds a rubber band around it, because Will hates that. It works pretty well, but it also gives Will teeth grind.

He smiles at her, and looks into her eyes for a moment. 

Percy grabs the plate, and sits next to her. She takes the strip and puts it in her mouth, and closes her eyes. For a moment, her father runs his hand through her hair.

She squeezes her eyes shut tighter, and then opens them, and looks at Percy. Piper takes a deep breath, and thanks him. He nods back, eyes knowing. Then he turns and looks at the arena, and the sands running and floating across the floor. The sun rays hit and jump off his face, and his eyes are calm and quiet.

She thinks he looks good. It's slow. She closes her eyes, and breathes, as a breeze she hadn't noticed tickles her face. Cool air with a mysterious tang she imagines came from the sand flows into her mind. A tangle of rock and metal and hard sharp anxiety grinding away at her center came apart. A wave of something warm swam through her again, leaving her fingertips numb, like she’d just shocked herself.

She thinks she’s happy. And that it’s concerning how Percy and Annabeth are the only sources of this particular brand of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was also much shorter initially, but now it’s damn near 3000 words, and I refuse to be a decent writer and cut it down. The core of this piece is for me to write happy, fluffy, nonsense and be happy and make others happy as well, and not give too much thought to pacing and length. I will do the best I can, but things are a bit difficult in the pandemic for me, to say the least. Also my tenses are trash for some reason. Nevertheless, happy place is the name of the game.
> 
> I wonder if my portrayal of this side of Will is a bit OOC, but I think it should be fine. Dude’s a medic for an army of teenagers, which definitely contributes even more reason than normal for the existence of procedures, organisation and standards in the context of medicine. Plus he’s very chill and kind, but I love the idea of him having certain places he goes all out anal for, and being quite upset when people disregard his procedures.
> 
> As a side note, I have two whole pages dedicated to the elimination process of finding the best version of my name in the google doc for this fic. A decent contender was Arewe_Weare, and a thankfully damn near stillborn contender was “rv_vr”.
> 
> I hope the anecdote makes up for the delay. Go away if it didn’t.
> 
> Next chapter will be on Annabeth. She tries to evolve to a workaholic as a coping mechanism, but Piper keeps pressing ‘B’.
> 
> Have a nice day :)


End file.
